2.515 or that sinister ease to forget 21 years of sistematic and selective assasinations against Colombian unionists (1986-2006) Escuela Nacional Sindical Human and Labor Rights Unit Guillermo Correa Montoya Researcher Medellín, Colombia July 2007 © ESCUELA NACIONAL SINDICAL, 2006 Calle 51 Nº 55-78 Tel: 513 31 00 Fax: 512 23 30 Correo electrónico: [email protected] www.ens.org.co Apartado Aéreo 12175 Medellín, Colombia 2005 Director General José Luciano SanínVásquez Director Académico Luis Norberto Ríos Navarro ISBN: Fotografía de carátula: Impreso en papel biodegradable fabricado con fibra de caña de azúcar. Este documento se ha realizado con la asistencia financiera de la Comunidad Europea. Los puntos de vista que en él se exponen reflejan exclusivamente la opinión de la ENS y, por tanto, no representan en ningún caso el punto de vista oficial de la Comisión Europea. Con el apoyo de: Contenido Introduction . 7 Colombia, the most dangerous place in the world for unionists . 8 A History of Oblivion, Protest, and Bullets . 10 Before the oblivion, a violence with its own names . 11 A quick shot at a nascent movement . 13 The founding bloodshed and the mobilized resistance . 14 Fatal coincidences: From United Fruit to Chiquita Brands and the banana worker massacres . 22 Of multiple victimizers and sinister relations (1986-1990) . 29 Selective deaths (1991-1994) . 35 Bullets that reinstate the founding ghost (1995- 1997) . 39 The unfolding of crude and disperse violence (1999-2002) . 47 From tactical changes in the violence to the overvaluing of the statistics (2003-2006) . 53 Sinister alliances and cynical responses . 59 The impact of the bullets. Anti-union violence in numbers . 63 Workers struggles and selective assassinations, a map of bullets and resistance . 69 Final conclusions . 69 The unforgotten names . 79 List of the Colombian unionized workers who have been victims of assassinations, 1986-2006 . 79 3 Around the year 1998 or so in the municipality of San Onofre –in Sucre—, a good friend of mine, Georgina Narváez Wilches, and other friends, decided together to create the union of municipal workers of San Onofre, and after several meetings and complying with all the requirements, we had everything ready, the thing is that our friend Georgina, who was going to be the president of our union, due to her dedication and leadership, went to the city of Sincelejo to register the union on November 21, and that same day, at night, upon returning from the task of registering the union, she was assasinated in her house. The assasination happened a few days after the general mayoral elections, that year, Luis Saleman was elected. That was the historiy of our union, after that day none of us wanted to meet again and think about the organization, we never even found out if the union was registered or if its registry was rejected. The year after Georgi was assasinated, her father died of sadness, as he never got over it, and the rest of her family decided to leave their property behind and move to other cities. Recounta by a friend of Georgina Cartagena, Colombia September 2006 5 Introduction Almost twenty years have passed since they killed him, and during those twenty years, every month, every week, I have felt that I have the unescapable duty, not to avenge his death, but yes, at least, to tell about it. (….) It’s possible that this is useless, no word will be able to resuscitate him, the history of his life and death will not give a new breath to his body, it will not restore his laughter, nor his immense bravery, nor his convincing and vigorous style of oratory, but by all means I need to tell it. His assassins remain at large, every day they are more numerous and more powerful, and my hands cannot combat them. Only my fingers, with each keystroke, can recount the truth and denounce the injustices. I will use his same weapon: words. Why? For nothing, or for the most essential and simple: so that it can be known. To extend the memory of him a little bit more, before the definitive oblivion arrives. The Escuela Nacional Sindical, workers across the country have suf- due to its concern for the difficult fered. It has published annual reports human rights situation of unionized analyzing the advances and setbacks workers, has over the last 16 years of the situation of unionists’ human carried out the tasks of research, rights, supported by rigorous studies distribution of information, and de- of information that is classified in the nouncement of the violations against human rights database of the ENS, life, liberty and physical integrity that called SINDERH. 1. Héctor Abad Faciolince, El olvido que seremos, Bogotá, Planeta, p. 254. 7 8 Cuaderno de Derechos Humanos Nº 18 – Escuela Nacional Sindical This publication has been writ- the spaces and intervals that still need ten as a contribution to the recovery to be defined, we present our homage and dignification of the memory of to all the victims in this publication, those 2,5152 men and women who as our contribution to the struggle have lost their lives exersizing their against the oblivion to which some fundamental right to union orga- want to condemn them to. nization, in a country that severely punishes the exersize of that right, Colombia, the most while the violators get confused in dangerous place in the the delayed, historical panorama world for unionists of violations, which allows them In regards to the human rights to disguise themselves in a cape of of unionists in the country, there are impunity, in which the truth ends up complex paradoxes and deep con- becoming fiction, justice becomes an tradictions between what is the law, agreement to forget, and reparation what is the reality, and what is said in becomes resignation and forgiveness. the media about that reality. On one At the same time, this document is hand, we can say that the institutional a denouncemet of the prolonged si- legal framework of the country is lences that the Colombian state has amenable to human rights. Colombia maintained with respect to a wave of has ratified and included in its 1991 violence that could be also called a Constitution many important inter- political genonce, which remains in national treaties that protect human absolute impunity. rights as well as the universal spirit There are many blank spaces in and norms that underly those rights.3 this history; some victims will not be In the realm of labor, the Colombian able to be named, due to the forgetting state has ratified several conventions of their bodies. However, despite all of the International Labor Organiza- 2. Following an exhaustive search to recover information, and a rigorous process of research and verification, we present a review of 21 years of assassinations of Colombian unionists, expanding this information with partial statistics that we have recovered for the years 1986- 1990. It is important to state that some of these statistics do not coincide with statistics that were published in past occasions, since the effort to recover information has led us to revise some of the consolidated statistics. This task of research and analysis of the indices of homicides is registered in the Human Rights Database of the Escuela Nacional Sindical. 3. See: Constitución Política de Colombia, Title II, Chapters 1,2 y 3, referring to fundamental rights. 21 years of sistematic and selective assasinations 9 tion (ILO),4 including those that refer persistence of an anti-union culture that to fundamental labor rights. keeps characterizing the Colombian Paradoxically, this favorable nor- union movement as allies of the guer- mative framework and the existence rilla as well as barriers to the economic of a series of institutions that should progress of Colombian companies and advocate for the effective protection the country in general. of human rights, contrasts with a These statements can be irrefut- humanitarian crisis marked by sys- ably confirmed by the annual human tematic, permament, and selective rights reports of the ICFTU (Interna- violations of the rights to life, liberty, tional Confederation of Free Trade and personal integrity of Colombian Unions)5 which shows that during unionists. These violations take place the last seven years (1999-2005), in the general context of impunity, Colombia has registered the highest which corroborates the fragility of number of human rights violations our democracy and the distance that against unionists in the world. Ac- exists between the legal country and cording to the information provided the real country, where human rights by the ICFTU on the dimensions of are permanently violated. anti-union violence and in particular The union movement is suffering homicides, Colombia has accounted a grave humanitarian crisis, expressed for between 57% and 88% of all ho- by the 2,515 unionists assassinated micides against unionists worldwide. in the last 21 years; the fact that on These statistics place the country in average, annually, more than half of the shameful position of being the the worldwide assassinations against most dangerous place in the world to unionists occur in Colombia; and in the carry out union activity. 4. Colombia has ratified 60 of the 187 Conventions expedited by the ILO. Among the most important are Conventions 87, 98, 154, and 151, which refer to union freedoms and the protection of the right to organize; Convention 26, related to the setting of minimum wages; Convention 95, on the protection of salaries; Convention 138, on the minimum age of workers; Convention 182, on the elimination of the worst forms of child labor; Convention 105, on the abolition of forced labor; and Conventions 98 and 111, which refer to equality in pay for male and female labor, and employment and occupational discrimination.